New York-area hospitals admit they are operating without malpractice insurance – leaving patients affected by substandard care wondering how they will pay for ongoing health woes, The Post has learned.

Southampton Hospital on Long Island and Parkway Hospital in Queens have told lawyers they no longer carry malpractice insurance.

“It’s jaw-dropping,” said Arthur Levin, of the Center for Medical Consumers. “The public will pick up the tab for the negligence of hospitals and doctors. I guess patients better start finding out whether hospitals are insured or not.”

The state does not require hospitals or doctors to carry malpractice insurance, but does mandate that hospitals have money set aside to satisfy court awards, a state Health Department spokesman said.

Still, most hospitals fork over millions in premiums each year, and many require doctors and nurses to carry malpractice policies.

Queens lawyer Martin Seinfeld said he learned Southampton and Parkway had dropped their malpractice policies after inquiries with the hospitals’ lawyers about two clients’ cases.

Parkway Hospital, where Seinfeld’s elderly client was allegedly dropped by staff after hip-replacement surgery, informed him it had “neither liability insurance nor malpractice insurance,” in a Feb. 24, 2003, letter from hospital lawyers.

His client had to subsequently undergo several procedures that left her in constant pain and dependent on a walker to get around, Seinfeld said.

“She might not get a penny unless I can figure out how the doctors contributed to this,” he said. “It’s absolutely horrific.”

In the second case, doctors at Southampton failed to treat a digestive condition, and the patient died.

In a July 30 letter to Seinfeld, Southampton lawyers wrote: “Southampton Hospital, upon information and belief, did not maintain an insurance policy which could be used to pay any judgment which is entered in this matter.”

Both hospitals told The Post they were self-insured, having set aside an undisclosed sum to pay court judgments.

If the funds run dry, the hospitals could be forced to sell assets, borrow or shut down. Both hospitals declined to provide the amount they had set aside.

Southampton opted to drop its coverage because premiums were too high compared to the judgments against it, a lawyer for the hospital said. Parkway, where the financial woes include owing more than $12 million to its workers’ pension funds, dropped the coverage because it does not employ doctors full-time, spokeswoman Cathy Ferrari said.

A bill in the state Assembly requiring hospitals to carry malpractice insurance has stalled in committee for years.

“When we looked into it, we found the Health Department has ample authority to do it by regulation, and we didn’t find any indication in the real world that this was a problem,” said Richard Gottfried, chairman of the Assembly’s health committee.